seisyll
read and liked
Dave's
review of The Mezzanine:
"Not my cup of tea, followed by some long-winded passage detailing the history of the string that connects the tea bag to the paper tab. "
"Not my cup of tea, followed by some long-winded passage detailing the history of the string that connects the tea bag to the paper tab. "
I read this book with it propped up in the air, easeled in one hand, while I ate an eggs overeasy. This combination pleased me. Suddenly, the moment drew when my fork punctured that kingly golden membrane, leaving four machine-precise pin pricks from which began to pour rivulets of viscous bird embryo. My body filled with urgency! For though the brilliant slime took its time bathing the fluffy miniature tundra which ensconced its birthing capsule, I felt the overturning of the great breakfast hourglass which governed my morning plate. Making a curved cut with my fork right at the receiving point of this unpredictable gush—then swiveling the silverware stem and marking another symmetrical incision, I then scooted the prongs under the excised flap and delivered it up into my mouth, descending my face to the halfway mark in order to catch the gulp of it before any of the refugee yolk could wobble overboard. With the race on, my bookstand hand went limp and I felt all faculties divert to the slurping up of the quickly growing swamp before it would begin to intrude upon my remaining triangle of cinnamon toast.
Of course, we know that not all descriptions can be this majestic and clinical, can they? I assure you that in The Mezzanine they are!
Good people, good reader with your good reads: I say this book is an egg race of its own. Every image is greedily invested with every color and stink, and the author is hurrying to make it true and bring to life some kind of nostalgia in your mind of the age of the 20th Century before the yolk can set. He does not just describe his plastic drinking straw—he describes the paper drinking straw; the bad blood and pressing dilemmas born in the switch from one style of straw to the other; the trouble straw wrappers have had amid this sour history; the effect on cups; the possible wider cultural effects. He does not just talk about the workings of a record player—he explains the beauty of grooved surfaces as a class. Various types of brooms are weighed and found wanting. Celery is designated as “cheap chew-interest” whereas olives are denoted “an expensive power.” Speculation is made of the green light which can be seen in the final slit at the top of an escalator. An exploded popcorn is recognized as a Brazilian, paisley beauty.
To so many readers they will find this book as no more than a progenitor to Seinfeld. Or as a plotless, soulless rant. Fine, see it as an essay.
To me, this is good, important work. A dense but slender catalog of sights and memories that came to a man who broke his shoelace in 1986. This book belongs in the Smithsonian as an artifact of our history. A verbal polaroid which captures everything that photographers attempt to, but cannot. I guess it can be annoying at times. I think that is just the impatience of wanting the yolk to stop running so fast.
Also left unanswered is the question of why pharmacists feel so compelled (or if they are otherwise coerced beneath the desk) to staple the receipt to the bag. ]]>
"“I absolve you from perfumes.” — DQ, p. 37."
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Well, I guess this was funny, in sort of a distant way. I did think it had some clever turns in it.‘Are you,’ I asked. ‘waiting for your husband?’
‘My husband,’ said Marylou, ‘has gone to Verona for the weekend to stay with a business associate.’ She made the expression ‘business associate,’ which I would previously have thought innocuous, sound decidedly pejorative. She didn’t make ‘husband’ sound all that flattering, either.
— p. 66
One thing that really struck me is how she suddenly made finance law seem really interesting. Four of the main characters in this are tax lawyers. And, what’s more, she manages to bring some intrigue to it. It’s the same strategy used in Michael Clayton. They took this lawyer and tilted him somewhere between cop-and-gumshoe. While capitalizing on the wit and cynicism that people can accept from a lawyer character.
So when they start discussing how to create a tax shelter on £400,000 inherited or when they’re going into the nuances of being ‘domicilied’ in England, it felt like a brave move to get into those mundane details. It really added to the feeling of these lawyers being overworked by their own obsession.
The rest of the book is kind of like a romance. It’s a girl’s book or something. ]]>
bookshelves: aborted
G. K. has a very well-mannered but rabid following in the United States. Witness the Chesterton Society, which selected the stories for this Father Brown anthology, and pay particular note to the list of his collected works they publish. A monstrous thirty-four volumes.
The side of Chesterton that I personally am fond of is that voice cultivated in his works such as The Club of Queer Trades, a book framed like a mystery—but which is really just a whimsical and supernatural tale at heart. His two sleuth characters in that book, Rupert and Basil Grant, are just extremely lovable.
My trouble with mystery stories lies in what they sacrifice in order to be sufficiently brain-teasing. I like a story to feel like it’s free to go where it wants. A mystery, however, always has a force ending. So, to me, usually a sense of the writer’s expertise comes in whether the machinations of the plot’s inner workings are subterranean enough.
These stories generally invest more in the puzzles than in the mood or the imagery. Although, I really thought the first two stories (‘The Blue Cross’ and ‘The Secret Garden’) were fantastic, the rest felt trifling for what this man was capable of. In fact, it was really only in those two stories that I grasped Father Brown himself at all. In the first story, he tells a detective that his ability to solve crimes comes from his time hearing so much confession. This seemed like a great premise. Ahh, so that’s how he understands the rascally mind.
In other stories, it seems that Father Brown himself is treating the thefts or murders as nothing but trite fifteen-pager stories. Take ‘The Honour of Isreal Gow’ where Father Brown is asked to explain a situation involving some snuff on a mantlepiece, loose gears on the floor, and a lack of wax in the candelabras. He explains some ten or twelve possible solutions, outwitting the police staff who can’t concoct a single one. The story began feel like a mental exercise. Like I was peeping on a mystery writer’s morning regimen of sit-ups and 5-yard dashes.
Anyway, I do love this bloke. I just really wish he would have given Basil Grant the same time he gave Father Brown. ]]>
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seisyll
read and liked
Kirk's
review of The Big Sleep:
" She was the first thing I saw when I walked into the bookstore. Such a looker I damn near tripped over a stack of calf-high hardbacks set next to a stand of morning papers.
"I'm sorry," she said. "We're not quite open ye...more "
" She was the first thing I saw when I walked into the bookstore. Such a looker I damn near tripped over a stack of calf-high hardbacks set next to a stand of morning papers.
"I'm sorry," she said. "We're not quite open ye...more "
In this volume, there are many tigers. Some panthers. There are a few labyrinths and dungeons. Of course, there are, right?
Yeah, well, there is also a lovely fashion model named Teodelina Villar. He has a pair of detectives named Dunraven and Unwin—styled in the manner of G. K. Chesterton. And a foretold “crystal egg” which Borges himself thinks he can employ to find a dead woman.
It is wild how much the man does in such short pieces. In particular,
● The Other Dead, the memory of a missing soldier decays. Can they determine if he was a coward or a hero before it is gone? (8 pages)
● The Zahir, in which Borges attempts to self-diagnose his obsession over a certain coin. This is the one with the fashion model. Some suggest this story is the inverse of The Aleph. (10 pages)
● Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth, featuring the two English detectives. This story is followed by a second story which details the full story the pastor tells at the pulpit. (10 pages + 2 pages)
● The Aleph, a very poor poet devotes his life to writing a poem for every plot of land on the entire Earth. Again, Borges plays himself, humoring this guy. He discovers the man may have a device which will assist him in seeing a beloved woman, now deceased. (16 pages)
● The Theologians, describing the fate of John of Pannonia, who insisted that time was circular. The scriptural proof and such is just cool I think. (9 pages)
These five stories are as good as his oft-anthologized stories from Labyrinths or Ficciones. A few are in Labyrinths I guess, but don’t miss these five at least, please. ]]>
by Jorge Luis Borges
You deleted my comment!! That’s too funny.
Look, I know you don’t like people responding to you, but hey just read The Aleph. It’s only like 15 pages. Too easy! There’s really something special about what Borges feels for Beatriz in that one. ]]>
I’ve been informed that the Modern Library Publishing House desires to rush out the following update to their Reading Group Guide, a brief comprehension quiz supplied at the tailmost pages of this edition. Stand by.
---
READING GROUP GUIDE
"The humblest heads will always lie most effusively upon a gentle bed of reflections born from good, honest Q and A." - William Makepeace Thackerey
1. What does Dombey say are the qualities of a gentleman’s sincere regret? No peeking now.
2. Supply the surname gifted to Polly Toodle when she is given her post at Dombey. Is it a good nickname? Do you like it? Please also list the permutations which Mr. Toots makes of the following characters’ names: Walter Gay, Edward Cuttle, Solomon Gills. Oh, put down all the names Bagstock gives himself, duh, of course! And include any other hilarious errors in befuddling or ransacking of such christening consonants and take your time.
3. Discuss Dombey’s dangerous sense of pride! This is a good one. Get the whole reading group close together for this one. You should be able to feel each other’s breath on the next person’s back of hand. Now, first of all, was it real enough? (Steady!) Come now, of course it was real enough. Let’s get on to more pressing questions already. Was he truly haughty page after page? How starched was his cravat? I mean I know it says it was extremely very highly starched, but was it really so starched? And what of his gorget? His divan? Speak of his fob and reaction to the many nosegays that are brought forth (even as the grampus.) Now, look back and tell me. Has this not been an enlightening discussion, the which of which has not been seen quondam in all parts of this county and many many others of its diffident nature?
4. On page 108, why does Walter draw pictures of Mrs. Brown? (Actually, this is a very good question and I would really like to know!!)
5. What creature, upon laughing, became ”nothing but a heavy mass of indigo”? Hint: if you read the book, you would know this one.
6. Bagstock’s attendant, the Native, is said to save his own set of private zests and flavours that he would sprinkle all over J. B. Joshy Boy’s food to really kick things up a notch. This is a fun idea! If you had your own Native, what sort of sprinklings and artificial substances would you have him employ? What would be the desired effect? If required, how would the desired effect then be negated? If in a tussle with the Native, who would come out on top — you or he? Lastly, were powdered donuts invented at this time in history? Thank you.
7. How tall was Long Saxby? Is he even a character in this book?
8. When Mrs. Skewton rises from her bed-ridden madness, she writes on a page: “Rose-coloured curtains.” Does she amend this statement? How so? Is the effect of it startling? (Or, if she did not amend, was that startling?) Who is death? What is paralysis? When the Past rests, what else is called upon to slumber beside it? What do we all do “once more”? How extraordinary is it? And, lastly, but is it really?
9. To whom does Bunsby look when introduced to Captain Cuttle at the end of the book? Also try to remember that men, which was a sort of very specific gender in those days, seldom know their blessings. And it’s true.
10. Which is your favorite catchphrase: (1) “All I ask is that you’ll remember the medical man!” by Mr. Toots, or (2) “Walter’s drowned, an’t he?” by Cuttle. All other catchphrases and senseless repetitions are, heretofore, null and void. Especially if it has to do with the Peruvian Mines. ]]>